A good tree bears good fruit.

In todays Gospel, when Jesus said, “Every good tree bears
good fruit” he was saying that anyone who does nothing but good is a good
person in God’s eyes.

That would apply to Jo Cox, the forty-one-year-old member of
parliament who last Thursday was shot three times then stabbed to death for her
opposition to England’s leaving the European Union.

Her father worked in a toothpaste factory, and Jo worked there
to support herself. At eighteen she won a scholarship to Cambridge, where she
said for five years she was knocked about by snobs with no other interests than
how one spoke and who one knew.

From age twenty-five to thirty-four she worked for the
charitable group Oxfam, for whom she solicited help for the severely
disadvantaged in Darfur and Afghanistan. Back in England after that, she devoted
herself to preventing early deaths among children.

She and her husband had two children whom they raised on a
houseboat on the Thames. “Out of the blue” the British Labor Party chose her
for an empty seat in the House of Commons where she campaigned for easing
suffering in Syria.

Even though she had gone abut her duties quietly, people all
over are now realizing that they have lost a true Good Samaritan.